Damian dragged Aria into the meeting hall like she was nothing more than a piece of evidence he was forced to present. His hand gripped the chain attached to her collar—tight, unforgiving, furious with every step he took. The steel doors opened with a crash that echoed across the vast marble chamber, where twelve crime-family bosses sat in a perfect circle of power, wealth, and rot.
The air felt colder than yesterday. Sharper. Hungrier.
A dozen pairs of eyes lifted at once. Not a single one held sympathy. Some held lust. Some held cruelty. Most held calculation.
Aria’s pulse fluttered painfully in her throat as Damian pulled her to the table—this time not beside him, but slightly behind, as if to remind everyone she breathed only because he permitted it.
He dropped the chain onto the polished obsidian surface with a brutal clatter.
It coiled there like a serpent, glinting under the lights.
Aria’s trembling fingers twitched, but she didn’t move. The collar hummed faintly, chilling her through its cold metal.
The eldest boss, Don Vescari, leaned back, cigar smoke curling from his lips as he studied her. “Wolfe,” he drawled, “your refusal last night weakened alliances that have stood for generations. Our traditions are not suggestions. They are law.”
Damian didn’t sit. He stood behind Aria’s chair—an executioner’s shadow.
“Your laws,” he replied, voice like a blade sliding through silk, “are not binding over what belongs to me.”
A murmur swept the room. Aria’s breath caught.
Another boss leaned forward, eyes crawling over her like infestation. “If she is yours, offer her. Tribute Night is older than your Syndicate. Navarro honored it every year.”
A laugh, bitter and cruel, cut through the room.
“He offered other people’s daughters,” someone said. “Poetic that his own sits here now.”
Aria flinched. Damian’s jaw flexed. They noticed.
One of the younger bosses smirked. “We propose a vote. Hand over the Navarro girl to restore balance. If she’s truly just an asset, you shouldn’t object.”
Another chimed in. “And if you won’t comply, perhaps we arrange… consequences. You’re not untouchable, Wolfe.”
A low, dangerous sound vibrated in Damian’s throat.
Aria’s hands shook under the table.
The eldest boss raised a hand. “We vote. Majority rules. This decides her fate and yours.”
Damian didn’t look at Aria, but she felt the tension rolling off him—tight, coiled, lethal.
Vescari spoke again. “All in favor of claiming the girl for Tribute Night—”
Hands began to rise. One. Two. Three. Four.
Aria’s heart slammed against her ribs. Five hands. Six. Seven.
Damian’s eyes darkened into something primal, something she felt down to her bones. Eight. Nine.
The vote was swinging hard against him. Her vision blurred with fear. Not for herself—she already knew fear. But for what Damian would do. Ten hands.
“Enough.”
Damian didn’t shout—but the sound stopped conversation, breath, movement.
His hand slammed onto the center of the table with such force the obsidian surface cracked down the middle. The sound split the air like a gunshot.
Every man in the room froze. Aria jerked violently, the crack echoing in her skull.
Damian leaned forward, voice quiet but soaked in violence. “If you push this… if you think you can take what’s mine—” he glanced at Aria for half a second, enough to reveal something terrifying beneath his hatred “—then understand what you are choosing.”
His fingers pressed into the cracked surface, knuckles white.
“You’re choosing war.”
Silence crashed over the room. Heavy. Absolute. Not a single boss lifted their hand now.
Damian straightened slowly, control sealing over his rage like armor. He adjusted his cuff with deliberate precision. “This vote,” he said, “is over.”
Vescari swallowed hard. “We… will postpone the decision.”
“No,” Damian corrected, stepping behind Aria, reclaiming the chain with a sharp jerk. “You will cancel it.”
No one answered. No one dared.
Aria felt the room shift—a thousand-year-old hierarchy bending, reshaping, trembling around a single man’s defiance.
Around the monster her father created. Around Damian Wolfe.
She rose shakily as he pulled her toward the door, the chain taut between them. For a moment, she dared to look back at the table of men who had just chosen fear over tradition.
And she realized something that made her knees weaken:
Damian didn’t save her because he wanted her.
He saved her because he refused to give her up.
Because in his twisted, brutal world, she was the one line he would not let them cross.
Not even if it cost him everything. Not even if she was Navarro blood. Not even if he hated her. The room exhaled only when the doors slammed shut behind them.